Chapter 1 - The First Frost and the Frozen Drawer
The click of the lock on that chilly November evening echoed in Ethan’s mind like a gunshot. At thirteen, Ethan had already developed the observant, hyper-vigilant eyes of an adult who spent too much time expecting disaster. Sitting on the worn sofa in Apartment 3B, he stared at the small wooden nightstand in his mother’s former bedroom.
Inside the drawer lay three hundred-dollar bills, a crumpled five-dollar bill, and a piece of notebook paper where Laura had scribbled in her hurried, elegant cursive: Be smart, Ethan. I’ll be back before the snow stays on the ground.
Now, mid-December had arrived, and the first true blizzard of the New York winter was howling against the frosted windowpanes.
Ethan counted the money again. Forty-five dollars left.
“Ethan? My stomach is making noisy sounds,” five-year-old Sophie murmured from the corner of the small, drafty living room. She was wearing two mismatched sweaters—a faded pink cardigan belonging to Lily and an oversized navy hoodie that Ethan had grown out of two years ago.
Ethan quickly shoved the remaining bill into his pocket and managed a warm, reassuring smile. “That’s just the hot chocolate monster inside your belly, Soph. He’s just calling for dinner. Lily, what do we have left in the pantry?”
Ten-year-old Lily stepped out of the tiny, grease-stained kitchen, her hands dusted with flour. Her young face carried a quiet, solemn maturity that broke Ethan’s heart every time he looked at her. “Half a box of rolled oats, two cans of black beans, and three potatoes that are starting to sprout, Ethan. The milk turned sour yesterday morning. I had to throw it down the sink.”
“It’s okay,” Ethan said, standing up and rubbing his cold hands together. “We still have oats. I’ll make oatmeal with warm water and a little bit of brown sugar. Ben, come help me set the table.”
Seven-year-old Ben was sitting under the kitchen table, meticulously assembling a tower out of plastic milk caps and cardboard scraps. His small fingers were red from the chill that crept through the apartment’s poorly insulated floors. “Is Mommy coming back tonight, Ethan? She said she’d bring us new coats. The blue one with the soft fur lining like the boy in the commercial had.”
Ethan felt a sharp, stabbing pressure behind his eyes, but he swallowed the lump in his throat. “She’s working hard, Ben. You know how traffic is in the city. Come on, help me with the spoons.”
Dinner was quiet. The four children huddled around the small laminate kitchen table, wrapped in blankets like a camp of refugees inside their own home. They ate the thin, sugary oatmeal in measured, silent bites. Every creak in the hallway outside Apartment 3B made all four heads turn toward the front door. Every footsteps on the creaking wooden stairs caused a brief, breathless pause in their chewing.
When dinner was finished, Ethan washed the bowls in cold water to save gas, though the radiator in the living room had already begun to clank and hiss less frequently as the building’s landlord turned down the heat for the night.
Once his siblings were tucked into the single double bed in the back bedroom—all three snuggled tightly together under three layers of heavy blankets to keep Sophie warm—Ethan walked out to the living room window.
He wiped a circle of frost off the glass with the palm of his sleeve and looked down into Willow Street.
Four stories below, streetlights cast long, shimmering orange reflections over the dirty ice on the pavement. People in heavy goose-down jackets, carrying shopping bags filled with brightly wrapped Christmas presents, hurried along the sidewalks toward warm homes, laughing and talking into the crisp night air.
Ethan looked up at the darkened sky. She’s not coming back, a dark, terrifying voice whispered in the back of his mind. A month is thirty days. It’s been forty-two.
May you like
He pulled his mother’s note from his pocket, stared at the handwritten words until they blurred before his eyes, and then crumpled the paper into a tight ball, shoving it deep into his pocket.
He was thirteen years old. He had forty-five dollars, three sprouting potatoes, three younger siblings who depended on him for every breath, and a secret that was growing heavier than the snow falling outside.
